Their love survived the unimaginable—discover the powerful story behind Turia Pitt and Michael Hoskin in the comments 👇
The Day Everything Changed
Pitt has described the circumstances of the 2011 fire many times in the years since.
According to her official biography, she was competing in a 100-kilometre ultramarathon when she encountered the grassfire. She was evacuated from the remote landscape by helicopter, critically injured and suffering full-thickness burns across 65 percent of her body.
The National Portrait Gallery of Australia provides an equally stark account of what followed. Pitt was placed in a medically induced coma for approximately a month and ultimately underwent more than 100 surgeries. She spent an extraordinary 864 days in hospital over the course of her treatment and recovery.
The injuries permanently changed her body.
Pitt lost all of the fingers on her right hand and two fingers on her left. For more than two years, she was required to wear compression garments and a mask as part of her burn treatment.
Doctors initially did not expect her to survive.
Yet she did.
The medical effort behind that survival was enormous. Donor skin also played an important role in her treatment. Gift of Life Donor Program has documented how donated skin grafts from American donors helped Australian doctors treating Pitt when suitable donated skin was unavailable locally.
Sixteen American donors contributed tissue used in the effort to save her life.
It is one of the lesser-known parts of Pitt’s story, but an important reminder that her survival was not the result of determination alone. It depended on emergency responders, surgeons, nurses, rehabilitation specialists, tissue donors, family members and many others whose work made recovery possible.
